Man shot dead on B’klyn street

NBC News leader Cesar Conde, in one of his first public acts in the job, has committed to building a workforce at the news organizations he supervises where at least half of the employees are minorities.

The staff is now nearly 27% minority, including 8% each of black, Latino and Asian workers. Conde set no deadline for achieving his “50 Percent Initiative.”

He also wants women to comprise half the employees at NBC News, MSNBC and CNBC, and he’s already nearly there.

The plan, first reported by the Los Angeles Times, makes Conde a leader in the current movement to diversify the news business.

That conversation has spread throughout the industry since George Floyd’s killing at the hands of Minneapolis police in May.

For example, the top editor at the Philadelphia Inquirer resigned after black reporters objected to a racially insensitive headline. Black reporters at The New York Times said an opinion piece on protests by Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., made them feel unsafe; the Times later said the column should not have run without changes and the opinion editor stepped down.

“It’s not just the right thing to do,” Conde said in an interview this week. “It’s the right thing for any business that wants to grow in the United States.”

A more diverse workforce will be able to spot stories that might otherwise be missed, Conde said.

Minority hiring will be one factor in how managers at the news organization are judged, he said.

That’s important, since it will force managers to focus on the issue both in hiring and in retaining minority employees, said Doris Truong, director of training and diversity at the Poynter Institute, a journalism think tank.

An 18-year-old man was shot and killed Friday evening outside a Brooklyn hotel that a resident described as a “hotbed of prostitution.”

The man was on New Jersey Ave. near Fulton St. in Cypress Hills about 7:45 p.m. when gunfire rang out, police said.

The victim was hit once in the chest outside the Hotel Sunborn, police and witnesses said.

Medics rushed the teenager to Brookdale Hospital, where we was pronounced dead.

Hotel neighbor Zee Sumler, 28, heard two pops she assumed were fireworks, but looked outside when she heard shouting.

“Someone was laid out on the ground,” Sumler said of the shot man, whose screaming friend stayed with him as emergency responders arrived on the bloody scene.

“I knew this was coming ... it’s gotten worse,” said Sumler, still shaken. “This is usually a quiet block.”

Police are looking for a black male suspect who was spotted running from the scene wearing all black, cops said.

No arrests have been made.

Two teenagers wounded in an early-morning shooting Friday weren’t talking about who shot them or what happened, police said.

The two victims, ages 17 and 16, were outside a bodega on Ellis Ave. near Pugsley Ave. in Unionport about 3:15 a.m. when an unidentified suspect opened fire.

The older teen was shot in both legs, cops said. The younger victim was hit in the chest.

Before police got to the scene, the two wounded teens got themselves to Westchester Square Medical Center. Medics there transferred them to Jacobi Hospital for further care, officials said. Both were expected to survive.

The teens refused to tell investigators what occurred prior to the shooting and were “combative” when asked about happened, said police.

Cops were scouring the area Friday in hope of finding surveillance footage that could help identify the shooter.